#chex week

[transbajablast]

i got sick, my chex week pegging fic will have to wait

[vintagequeer-oceansoul]

“Funny name for a girl.”

“Well Church is a pretty funny name for a guy.”

“Yeah... I guess you’re right.”

This is one of my favorite moments in the whole series. Just so simple and bittersweet.

[alaspooryork]

cue all the love to leave my heart it’s time for me to fall apart

[illumynare]

Red vs Blue Fic: Shall I Compare Thee

Summary: There are worlds where they are happy. Where he is enough, where she is enough. But not this world.

Parings: Chex. Warnings: Canon-typical language

Notes: Also available on AO3!

In another world, she has time to explain.

In this world, Tex who is Beta who is Allison who is stop calling me back, stop needing me, don't say goodbye I hate goodbye can tell him why she kidnapped Junior and trusted Omega, why she wanted so fucking much to end the war, and why she loved him anyway.

She has time to come back, to apologize, to touch his ragged edges and find their echoes in her seams. She heals him and she recreates him and they're whole, together. It's all that matters, in this world.

In another world, he isn't so tired.

In this word, he goes with her, lets her carry him out of the ruins of Freelancer, talks to her as she walks shuddering down the road of I'm not human I was never human.

They find York and they find Carolina and they find Wash and South and North. They knit the shreds of their team back together (he's seen them die so many times he can't take it again) and when they face the Meta, they run into his mind together, rip Sigma out by the roots, and eventually Maine rises from the ashes.

He says, Fuck yeah, you need me, in this world.

In another world, her fury has meaning.

In that world, she fights and she rages and she rips an answer out of the bastards who created her. She finds the Director and she makes him pay, and then she's free.

In any world, all she's wanted is freedom, but in this one she gets it.

In another world, he's good enough.

And Epsilon knows that isn't the whole reason, the whole answer, but as he burns himself out to save Tucker and the rest, he remembers Tex—his Tex's shattered helmet in the display case, and he knows he could have pulled her out of the memory unit if she'd wanted.

If he had been someone that she wanted.

But something went wrong in the copying process, his or hers, he's not sure. Alpha and Beta were made for each other, incomplete without each other, but Epsilon and Tex?

They were both spare parts, who needed a reason to live. And Epsilon got someone to give him a reason, while Tex had to make one for herself—and it's not fair, it's never fair, they both exist in the chasm of fucking unfair—

But he wasn't her reason.

And he remembers Carolina and Tucker and Caboose all the rest, and he knows that Tex isn't his reason either.

But he loves her, still, and as he unwrites himself, unmakes himself, all he can think is, I forget you.

[annefiction]

Inscrutable House

Red vs. Blue. A Church family fic for Chex Week. 850 words. Also on AO3.

All she knows is her mother isn’t really gone. Her father says so.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.

-Elizabeth Bishop, “Sestina”

At a house on the outskirts of Austin, a little girl comes home from school, stepping out of the heat and noise of the school bus onto the curb. She makes the walk alone up the long driveway to the front door with a fan-shaped glass window set far above her head.

The door is unlocked, so she doesn’t need her key. She gives the door a hard push behind her to close it. Her father always says Don’t slam the door, but it sticks in the threshold, when the wood swells in the summer heat.

Her father doesn’t hear her come in. He’s on the phone.

He’s on the phone every day. Ever since the woman in blue came to the door, a dark blue uniform like the one her mother has. Her daddy told her to go upstairs to her room. When she whined, he yelled and she stomped all the way, on every step.

She could hear him yelling even from upstairs. It didn’t make sense what he was saying. There's been a mistake, he said, over and over. Mistake. Mistake. Mistake.

She puts down her backpack by the door. She doesn’t have homework yet. She’s only in first grade. She knows how to read already, and the books in school are too easy.

Daddy is on the phone. She can see the little hands-free earpiece clipped to his ear, as he paces heavily from the open door of his office, through the living room, through the dining room, to the kitchen, and back again without getting anything.

“I want to talk to somebody who knows something,” he says. “I want to talk to—well, then, find me somebody who does.”

Daddy is busy on the phone. He doesn’t hear her go upstairs.

In her room she counts out crayons. Peach for Mommy and Daddy’s faces. Yellow for Mommy’s hair. Blue for Mommy’s uniform and Mommy’s eyes. Black for Daddy’s hair and Daddy’s pants and Daddy’s tie, and to outline Daddy’s shirt because you can’t draw white on white. Green for Daddy’s eyes.

Brown for the house. Blue sky, big yellow sun. It’s hot today. June in Texas. School will be out soon. And then Mommy’s supposed to come home.

She draws carefully, a picture she’s drawn before and knows by heart. She doesn’t make any mistakes.

It’s quiet now downstairs. Daddy’s off the phone. She puts the last touch on the picture—Daddy’s glasses, black frames she carefully draws in two squares—and takes it downstairs. Daddy’s in the kitchen at the stove. She goes to the fridge and pulls two magnets off carefully and hangs the picture up as high as she can reach. Daddy forgets to put them up so she does it for him. It smells like macaroni and cheese in the kitchen, and she can hear the sound of a spoon stirring, stirring in a saucepan.

“Daddy, what day is Mommy coming home?”

Scrape, scrape, the spoon keeps stirring.

“Daddy?”

“They don’t know yet.”

Her father’s voice sounds like a string when you pull it tight between your hands.

“You called them again today.”

“They still don’t know.”

“Okay,” she says.

Daddy doesn’t watch her eat or tell her to clean her plate, but she does anyway. Macaroni and cheese is her favorite, and she likes to eat her hot dog last, squishing the cut-up pieces around in the leftover cheese until they’re all cheesy and then eating them. Daddy doesn’t tell her not to play with her food. He eats half his plate and then gets up from the table. You’re not supposed to get up from the table before you’re finished. It’s the rules.

“Daddy has to do some work in his office,” he says. “Finish your dinner and go up to your room.”

That summer, the house is quiet, and Mommy doesn't come home, and Daddy spends a lot of time in his office, and Mommy doesn’t come home, and every day Daddy makes phone calls and his voice gets angry and he doesn’t finish his dinner and he shuts himself up in his office and the little girl draws pictures of the house with all the people who are supposed to be in it and reads books that are too old for her and learns well the meaning of Not yet and We don’t know.

She doesn’t see the news because Daddy never turns on PUBCOM anymore. She isn’t allowed in her father’s office, or on his computer, and sometimes he leaves his personal datapad lying around but she’s not supposed to touch it, and it always has grown-up, boring stuff on it anyway.

She is six, and though she can read above her grade level, she hasn’t yet learned to poke around in places she isn’t supposed to be, find things she isn’t supposed to know. She’ll be twice that age before she thinks to go looking—thinks to search her father’s desk and find the letter, dated May 30, 2528, two years before her father said the words out loud.

She will be a grown woman before she understands that he never really believed them at all.

[unplcnned-variable]

See, Church, this is why we don't fight with Tex over the sniper rifle. She's gonna win. And you're gonna lose your precious sniper rifle. So remember next time - Don't. Fight. Tex. For. The. Sniper rifle.

[in-sufficientdata]

He could never forget her, and his memories were the keystone in the center of everything he was. Yet it is said we are not human beings but human becomings. Leonard Church was no exception.

[ Full Story: FFN | AO3 ]

Chapter 51

School had started the Wednesday before her first cross country meet, and after that things fell into a pretty predictable routine. She had practice every day after school, and usually ran home afterwards. Many of her classes included the same people, and among them she made some friends outside of her cross country team. Fridays, she rode the bus home and Grandpa took her to the team dinner. And Saturdays, she had her meets.

After the first flurry of getting used to her schedule, school days fell into a predictable routine. After homeroom, Valerie had English class. The first reading the class was doing was Romeo and Juliet, the age-old classic. One of the first lessons was about how Shakespeare used puns in the play, and Valerie was glad to learn such a popular, famous, and revered writer used one of her favorite types of jokes.

She was about to speak up and make a remark during the discussion when the student to her left, Muriel Chavez, said, “Well, I mean, with so many words in his plays, it’s no wonder he used wordplay.”

Valerie looked over at Muriel and grinned. “Shakespeare certainly was playful, from what we know.”

The teacher groaned and Muriel laughed. “I think Mr. Arkwright wants to downplay that,” she said, winking at Valerie.

“It’s not my fault Shakespeare liked his playthings so much,” Valerie said.

“All right, all right,” Mr. Arkwright said.  “Let’s try and get through this lesson.”

Valerie and Muriel grinned at each other one last time before allowing the teacher to continue.

Keep reading on AO3

[transbajablast]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Summary:

He wasn’t even able to properly enjoy the pie, his entire body now focused on the lack of attention from her. All he wanted at this point was to get back home, where he could indulge in her body, to tear off her clothes, get on his knees and obey her every whim.

Oh, they were going to have fun at home.

OR

Church and Tex go on a nice date to a fancy restaurant and Tex makes sure they have round 2 of dessert.

MY FIRST CHEX WEEK FIC!!! this is honestly mostly like a prologue to the next chapter which is going to be. fucking